Author
Topic: Kenji likes the baking steel (Read 37497 times)

scott123

Still sounds like you are talking about the metal by itself. That's not what I'm talking about.

Brian, if you have aluminum on top, for a portion of the bake, it would be like baking on only aluminum. The pizza would cook at a highly accelerated aluminum rate until the aluminum was exhausted, and then it would cook at the slower cordierite rate.

I guess if you went with an exceptionally small piece of aluminum, you could get a quick burst of heat and then you'd drop to the cordierite speed, but I'm not sure how much thermal mass a small piece of aluminum buys you.

It would be ideal, though, to, rather than a burst of heat and then a drop, to have something more constant. If you put steel on top of aluminum, you'd get a steady steel rate of transfer for all the energy in both plates.

Specific Heat Capacity - The quantity of heat required to raise the temperature of a substance by one degree Celsius is called the specific heat capacity of the substance. The quantity of heat is frequently measured in units of Joules(J).

Brian, I'm always a little reticent to post recipes, because the protein content/brand of flour will dictate the necessary hydration, and everyone's environmental variables will dictate the yeast quantity. My recipes are also heavily geared towards the equipment I use and my personal skills. Once you start trying to compensate for other flours and for varying equipment, it can be especially difficult.

That being said, here's where I'm at. I pulled this recipe from an older recipe I posted a while back that was directed towards a beginner. Since it's here, I'm leaving it, but Brian, you can ignore the beginner's tips at the bottom.

Measure dry (no yeast). Measure wet (+ yeast). Mix to dissolve yeast. Dry into wet. Stir with a metal spoon until it's too stiff to stir, then knead, by hand, until very well mixed, but no further (3-4 minutes total). Dough should be somewhere between cottage cheese-y and smooth. (Window paning is too far). Scale. Ball and place in dough pans. Refrigerate 1 day. Re-ball and return to lightly oiled pan. Refrigerate 1 more day. Remove from fridge 3 hours before baking (shorter if containers are thin and less insulating).

Bake on 1/2" x 17" x 17" steel plate (or larger if your oven can fit it). Pre-heat plate for 60 minutes at 515. Plate should be positioned on an oven shelf that's about 7" from the broiler.

Dust wooden peel with 50/50 flour/semolinaStretch skin to 17" and place on peelQuickly dress the pizza, shaking between each topping to make sure the skin doesn't stickLaunch Wait 1.25 minutesTurn on broilerWait 1 minuteRotate pizza 180 deg. with metal peelWait .75 minute, watching for cheese to bubble and darkenRetrieve onto cooling rackAllow to cool 10 minutesTransfer to 18" metal pizza panSlice and serve

On a 17" pie, I put 7 ounces of sauce and 11 ounces of whole milk low moisture brick mozzarella. If the sauce is the right consistency (on the thick side), the cheese won't slide too much, but if the sauce is thin, the cheese will have a tendency to migrate and boil over the rim. Even with relatively thick sauce, keep the cheese away from the outer 2" of the skin (sauce to 1", cheese to 2").

My tap water has a lot of chlorine, so I have to boil it and then let it cool first. I've tried bottled water, but I find tap gives me a little better oven spring.

The yeast quantity is going to be a rough ballpark. This dough is like clockwork for me and ferments in 2 days. With your yeast, fridge temp, flour age, water, etc., it could be 1 day or even 3. You're going to want to shoot for a doubling of the dough, but what's really critical is how the underside of the dough looks. Ideally, if you have a large wide round clear proofing container, you can take photos of the underside and post them here.

If you've never opened a pizza skin before, you'll have a really hard time stretching this to 17". Stretching skills are something that neither a book nor this forum can help you master. You just have to do it over and over again. Here's a video to get you started (ignore the rolling pin stuff and the tossing- my dough is too extensible to toss).

Launching skins off a peel is another area where practice is essential. The nice thing about launching, though, is that you can launch the undressed skin onto the counter, put it back on the peel and launch it again, repeating it over and over.

Spring King flour can be hard to find. If you have trouble, you can use bromated All Trumps and blend it with 33% all purpose. In order to make a 'true' NY slice, though, you're going to want to track down bromated flour. Full Strength should be substitutable for Spring King, possibly with a slight reduction in water (I'd give 62% a shot).

Also, for anyone interested, I'll be changing this within the next 6 months to do a room temp bulk, rather than the re-ball. Right now, when I take the partially fermented dough balls out of the containers to re-ball, the containers are a bit gummy, and it's kind of a hassle to wipe them out. If I bulk, I save myself this trouble. It's just a matter of dialing in the right amount of yeast for a room temp bulk and deciding on a time frame.